Jodie feels embarrassed when some girls in her class laugh at her after one yells that Jodie's father is a garbageman. The teacher, Mr. Swales, reprimands the class for their behavior, telling them that being a sanitation engineer is an important and difficult job that keeps their city clean. He makes the class apologize to Jodie and assigns them to write letters thanking Jodie's father for his work.

1. PART OF SPEECH TEST
Underline present tense sentence!
Funny how you can always tell when somebody's laughing behind your back. Jodie hadn't
really heard anything, maybe a whisper, but when she turned around, the girls in the back row
of the class were looking at her, trying to hide smiles and giggles. She looked back at her
teacher. Mr Swales was talking about what people do all day. He also wanted to find out what
his students wanted to be when they grew up. He called on Billy Mitzer first.
"My daddy works in a bank," Billy Mitzer said. "I guess I want to work in a bank too.
There's lots of money in the bank." "My parents have a grocery store," Emmy DiSalvo
said. "Papa's behind the counter and Mama keeps the cash register. But I want to be an airline
pilot." Jodie liked it when Mr Swales asked them questions like this. He was about to call
on Jodie when the girls in the back row burst out laughing.
Shirley Danes yelled, "Jodie's Daddy is a garbageman! Pee-yoo!"
Everybody in the class laughed out loud. Everybody except Jodie, that is. She felt her face
turn bright red. She looked around the whole classroom. Everyone was laughing. Some kids
were even holding their noses.
Jodie looked at Mr Swales. He was angry. He almost never raised his voice, but now he
did.
"Silence! I want everybody quiet this instant." The laughter stopped immediately. The
sound of cars and people going by out on the street came through the windows. "You should
be ashamed of yourselves," Mr Swales said. "Being a garbageman...I mean, er, uhm...a
Sanitation Engineer, is a difficult and enormously useful job. We should all be grateful to Mr.
Harris. Where would we be without him? Up to our ears in garbage, that's where. How would
you like that?"
"Pee-yoo!" somebody said. A few kids started laughing again.
"It's not funny," Mr. Swales went on. "Garbage is a serious matter. I think you all owe
Jodie an apology. And after that, you're all going to write Jodie's father, Mr Harris, a nice
letter to tell him how much you appreciate what he does for all of us. In other words, keeping
our city clean."
PRESENT TENSE
Maria is fourteen years old. She ................ (live) on a small farm with her brothers and
parents.Every day, Maria........... (get up) at six o'clock. First, she........ (go) to the barn
and ....... (feed) the cows. Then, at seven o'clock she (have) breakfast with her family. Her
school ...... (be) five miles away so Maria and her brothers ........ (go) to school by bus.
They ........ (think) school is important for their future but the only thing Maria........ (not like)
is Math. She sometimes........ (forget) to write homework and then she......... (get) a bad mark.
Her parents ............(not be) happy then.